The boom in movie posters thanks to “Strangers Things”
Works of art that are also sensitive summaries that seek to summarize a filmed story without spoilers. Movie posters and posters are a cult that today you can hang not only in your teenage room but also in the living room of your house. It is a meaningful decoration that enjoys a freedom that advertising imagery sometimes does not have.
It all began in France when the owners of the Moulin Rouge saw in the art of Jules Chéret a possibility of tempting audiences, and at the same time promoting their shows by creating clear and precise associations of what people were going to find in its gloomy walls.
This artist, even more than the ubiquitous Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was the conceptual inspiration for modern film advertising and movie posters. His works inspired not only the world of movies, but also a wide range of businesses ranging from local railroad destinations to the profits of a bar of soap.
Starting in the 1930s, film poster design has gone through very different stages, evolving from small hand-made sketches to the digital graphic manipulation of the late 1980s. A thick summary of how movie posters changed, starts with the Art Deco that predominated in the first quarter of the 20th century. Later came the prominence that the actors themselves took on the posters of the 40s; braver typographic compositions until the 50s (be careful with the “Ben-Hur” poster), and in the 60s, photography began to be used in combination with illustration, giving rise to the current movie posters: digital compositions with photographs on very careful backgrounds.
Pop art works
The 60s can be considered the true boom of artists who were the result of fights between studios to have their services, as sometimes happened with scriptwriters or art directors. Those were times when work was more personalized and less dependent on agencies or design offices. There are gems like the creations of Saul Bass and his work for “The Man with the Golden Arm” in 1955. Bass is also responsible for “Love in the Afternoon” (by Bill Wilder) and the poster for “Vertigo” for Alfred Hitchcock.
Another is Bob Peak, who began making the poster for “West Side Story” in 1961, and who continued with “Superman” (1978) and “Apocalypse Now” (1979), just before taking an unprecedented commercial leap and taking the franchise of several James Bond films. Richard Amstel is another great whose work is part of the best movie posters in history , with titles like “The Coup” (1973) or “Chinatown” from '74. This is the decade where the legend of Taxi Driver and of a closed night covering Robert De Niro's back in Guy Peellaert's classic poster was also forged .
Butcher Billy: the Brazilian who made the Stranger Things poster
This Brazilian artist and graphic designer, known for his works of art and series of illustrations based on the contemporary pop art movement, leaves traces of his taste for comics in every brushstroke.
It was him, already with fame gained after having worked with important magazines and media such as The Guardian, Rolling Stone, The Huffington and Vanity Fair, among others,
the one chosen to create a poster not only for the fourth season of Stranger Things, but for each of its 9 chapters. Crossing reality and fiction, their projects promote creative concepts that reference fictional characters with real-life personalities, such as musicians, artists, historical figures and politicians.
Due to great success and online demand from Stranger Things fans and followers, the designs were later used on physical products that could be purchased from the Netflix store. The posters were also adapted to billboards that were installed on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, perhaps the most palpable proof of their triumph in the world of film posters.
